


Stupid Cupid

by HonestMistake



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Cupid Prompto Argentum, Cupid's Got a Shotgun, Failing to Fall Out of Love, High School, Love Potion/Spell, Love at First Sight, M/M, Romantic Comedy, Soulmates, Trying to fall out of love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22839436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HonestMistake/pseuds/HonestMistake
Summary: An accident on the job leaves Prompto Argentum hopelessly in love with the completly off limits Noctis Lucis Caleum. If he wants to keep his feathers and Noctis' destiny intact he'll have to destroy those feelings before they get too strong for him to ignore. It should be easy enough all he has to do is disguise himself as a mortal and get himself to fall out of love with Noctis without letting Noctis fall in love with him.There's no way this could backfire.
Relationships: Gladiolus Amicitia & Prompto Argentum & Noctis Lucis Caelum & Ignis Scientia, Gladiolus Amicitia/Ignis Scientia, Onesided Prompto Argentum/Ardyn Izunia, Prompto Argentum/Noctis Lucis Caelum
Comments: 9
Kudos: 74





	1. When Cupid Shoots Himself in the Foot

Prompto is minding his own business, doing his job the way he’s supposed to be when the incident happens.

He’s lying on a rooftop ledge across the street from a quaint little café drinking from a steaming cup of hot chocolate as he readies his rifle. His targets are sitting together at a table he can’t hear the conversation, but from the body language alone he can tell it’s going well. They’re being so sweet, all shy smiles and nervous energy as they try to hide how excited they are. Their hot coffees have long gone cold because they’re too focused on each other to think of drinking them.

He doesn’t know much else about them, but then again he never does. Trying to find information about his targets usually ends in heartache. All he knows is that blind date that’s taken a turn for the better, one is a bookish secretary obsessed with princesses, and the other is a history buff with a penchant for late night baking. 

He hums happily as he waits for the opportune moment kicking his feet in the air like a teen girl talking on the phone or reading a magazine in one of those cheesy teen movies. His handgun sits next to him primed and ready just in case he has to make a crack shot. He makes up dialogue for them in his head, silly stuff about chocobos and video games that helps take his mind off the icy cold. He’s so intent on watching them that the rest of the world falls away.

That is his first mistake.

He doesn’t even notice the crows until one of them rams right into him in a shower of black feathers and angry squawking. His body instantly turns into permeable frosty wind and snow, but it’s already too late. He yelps grabbing his gun even as he falls off the ledge onto his ass. His arms flailing about as every word of gun safety he’s ever heard flies right out of his head at the ringing of the loudest bang he’s ever heard. 

Bang!

That is his second mistake.

“Shit!” He curses as he scrambles to get to his feet and back onto the ledge. 

“Where is it!” He shouts as he desperately looks out over the crowd searching for the tell-tale pink glow of a love bullets impact.

With any luck he’ll have hit a wall and this’ll be a fun story to tell the others later, but given his spectacular lack of luck he just knows that he’s in for it. His eyes suddenly land on one of the passersby and while he intends to continue his search his eyes won’t move. He literally can’t look away.

The young man looks up and turns in his direction and in spite of it being impossible with him being blessed with invisibility and all it feels like the mortal’s looking right at him. His vision sharpens, eyes taking in every feature with a clarity that isn’t possible for mortal eyes. His heart nearly bursts with affection as he drinks the other in. Dark hair that’s perfectly ruffled, pale skin that glows in the afternoon light, eyes so deep blue he could drown in them, lips as pink and soft as freshly bloomed rose petals. 

Shiva's creation shudders leaning out over the edge of the building to get a closer look. A sigh escapes his lips as he blinks slowly his heart fluttering as warmth spreads out from the blush on his cheeks down until it feels like his entire body is flushed. His lips split into a grin that’s positively luminous as frost creeps from his chest out, coating his shoulders and dripping from his body even in the oppressive summer heat.

The young man shakes his head and turns away breaking the spell his eyes had cast over him.

His grin fades as the realization dawns on him and quite suddenly he knows exactly where that bullet had gone. He looks down at himself his hands touching his skin, the tingling sensation running through his body a sure sign that he'd somehow managed to hit himself. A glittering light catches his eye and drags his attention down to his foot and the new wound leaking bubbling pink light right through it. He watches it in awe until the wound closes over and the light spreads through his body with a steadily growing warmth. He gapes down at his foot his jaw dropping in shock.

He's gotten poked by his own arrows before, he's stabbed, shot, and nicked himself more times than he can count, and it doesn't matter if it’s arrows, bolts, or bullets, they have never worked on him before. Not even when he wanted it to, not even when he begged for it to. His projectiles usually just faded into nothingness when they struck him, swept away in the wind like dust through his fingers, a bitter reminder that he was unworthy of the gift he bestowed onto others. 

His arrows have never dissolved into the light of love meant for mortal hearts, for humankind. He's never fallen in love with someone before, no matter how beautiful they looked, no matter how kind they were, no matter how much power they held, no matter how much he wanted to love them, no matter how much he’d pitied them, no matter how much they needed him, no matter how much he’d needed them, his heart the cold unbeating thing that it was has never been swayed.

Before now he’s always assumed that he was immune to his own power the way Shiva’s immune to the cold, but apparently not. Apparently, he just needed the right person to come along.

He forces his eyes closed and ducks behind the ledge that lines the edge of the roof blocking the young man from his sight his lips splitting in a grin that’s so big it overtakes his face. The fluttering in his stomach doesn’t stop, the vague ‘I might just be sick at any moment’ feeling doesn’t fade, in fact he feels like he could die at any second from the sheer force of how elated he feels. He peeks back over the wall frowning when it takes him a moment to find his paramour who is even now moving away. 

Panic floods him; he can’t lose the only person he’s ever loved, not like this. He keeps his eyes locked on his mortal and pulls his camera from the ether, his fingers moving expertly across the device even with his hands shaking from excitement. It’ll wipe him out completely, but he’s too eager to learn who it was that had made his bullet work for him to worry about the consequences. He lifts up his camera, centers it on his mortal, and takes the shot. The screen lights up with his picture and Prompto’s smile falls as he reads the name that pops up over his head. His stomach turns as his fingers clench the camera making the plastic casing creak.

Prince Noctis Lucis Caleum stares up at him from under the glittering gold font declaring his name.

Tears gather at the corners of his eyes and bitter curses drip from his lips. There’s a list of those he’s forbidden from touching, those who are destined to never be swayed by matters of the heart. And right up there at the top of the list written in big bold letters is the name of one Noctis Lucis Caelum whose destiny belongs to Bahamut, The Crystal, and Eos. 

Noctis his arrow worker, who is fated to waste away in a Crystal prison and die young on the throne he will never rule from. He won't be able to just stand by and watch Noctis bravely march into the jaws of fate, it isn't in his nature. Love doesn't care for things like destiny or fate; love has a tendency to throw monkey wrenches and spanners into the works like it’s going out of style. If he lets this continue he’ll doom the world in a desperate fruitless attempt to save his love. 

He feels tears gather in the corners of his eyes his heart ripping in two as the solution to his problem presents itself with an icy jolt against his thigh. He reaches down and grabs the Knife of Hate from its sheath, the icy metal sending a chill through his whole body. He swallows against the bile that wants to rise into his mouth exhaling shakily as he turns the blade so that it faces his stomach. 

The blood red blade shimmers in the air like asphalt on a hot day, malice pouring off the shimmering dark material like smoke. He keep his eyes on Noctis as he lines up the blade with his heart, takes a deep breath to steady himself, and plunges it into his chest. His eyes screw shut as cold fire spreads through the wound, the poison of hate eating away at the love that has taken root in his heart. He can see it branching out from the knife, a dark purple mass crawling through his veins just barely visible through his skin.

It brushes up against that light airiness in his chest sinking in and surrounding it. He braces himself as the chill turns into a heat that just boarders on the edge of painful waiting for the sickening feeling he knows is coming. Only it doesn’t come, instead the warm tingle in his chest overtakes the ice and the dagger of hate cracks. He barely has enough time to pull it from his chest before it splinters into pieces.

He lets out a whimper as he looks at the ruined blade, the warmth in his chest forgotten over the dark feeling settling inside his stomach. Tears pour from his eyes freezing into crystalline drops of ice and shattering as they hit the ground. Its true love, of course it is, what else could break the Knife of Hate?

He’s so screwed.

Prompto Argentum, The Quicksilver Archer, Scion of Shiva, Guardian of the Heart, Defender of Lovers, and officially the biggest screw up in the history of Eos. There’s no coming back from a mistake like this, this isn't just bad. This is Bahamut himself coming down from the heavens to stab you with every sword in his arsenal bad. This is you’re going to get yourself erased from existence bad. This is suffering for all eternity while listening to Bahamut lecture you on what a failure you are bad. This is the agony of having to watch the only person you’d ever loved walk right into the arms of death or leave the entire world trapped in darkness until time itself collapses bad.

He angrily wipes at his eyes brushing away his frozen tears as he straightens his back. He'll just have to do this the old-fashioned way, people fall out of love all the time, he's seen it happen and prevented it himself more times than he can count. Even true love isn't infallible, it's more resilient but not impossible to kill. All he has to do is meet Noctis in person and with him being Bahamut’s chosen he has to be just as obnoxiously duty bound and self-righteous as his benefactor. It wouldn’t take much of dealing with Mr. I'm Always Right and Absolutely Perfect and You All Suck 2.0 for his burgeoning feelings to fade into the blissful oblivion of apathy. 

He goes back to his spot and quickly fires off two shots into his original targets just before they get up to leave, smiling to himself as they immediately sit back down and return to their conversation. With that done he packs up his equipment, taking his time to inspect it and make sure it didn't get damaged in this whole fiasco. He tells himself he isn't putting it off, tells himself that he always takes this long, but even he can tell that he's lying to himself. 

He doesn't want this, doesn't want to fall out of love so soon after finding it. He takes longer to just sit there, to hold that feeling close and bask in it. It's harder now that he knows it's not going to be an instant fix. He can't even imagine how hard it will be seeing Noctis in person, but the longer he lingers he knows the harder it will be. So he reaches inside himself for that well of power hidden deep inside him and lets it overtake him. His body grows heavier as his wings sink into his shoulders. The ethereal glow and translucence of his body darkens into solid flesh and bone. He leans back over the edge and looks down at the crowded street below, his stomach swooping at the sight of the drop. He swallows against the nauseous feeling, he’s definitely mortal now. 

Now all he has to do is find himself a prince and hope he‘s a jackass.


	2. Clip Your Wings

Hindsight is as they say twenty-twenty and in that spirit he really should have waited until he was on solid ground to turn into a very visible, very tangible, very squishy human teenager. His head bonks against the door as he jostles the handle cursing himself under his breath as the damnable thing stays locked up tight. As it is he is stuck on the roof with scarcely enough power left to make a light flicker let alone unlock a door. He groans as he sinks onto his knees his forehead dragging down the door in a pitiable display.

Changing into a human has used up the very last of his reserves meaning that he’ll be stuck up here for hours unless someone opens the door. He sighs letting out all the air from his strangely tight feeling lungs and flops onto his back like a fish flopping for air on a ship’s deck. He pulls his phone from his pocket and holds it up over his head clicking on the internet app and typing Prince Noctis into the search engine. If nothing else this gives him some time to research his target.

A haze covers his vision making everything soft and bright and so very beautiful. He’s immediately distracted by the wave of Noctis pictures that flood his phone, his eyes darting from picture to picture and without even realizing is already picking out the best and adding them to his album. He feels as light and fluttery as he does with wings and he’s almost lost entirely to the feelings rising up inside of him before a picture of a solemn-faced vacant-eyed young Noctis in a wheelchair brings him crashing from his love borne high.

His heart pangs at the sad sight and he has to quickly click to the next photo before he can be pulled back into that horrible memory where he uselessly tried to protect the young prince and had only ended up with failure and scars that wouldn’t fade from his body or his mind. He can’t go back to drooling over pictures of Noctis with guilt sitting like a grouchy behemoth on his chest.

He sighs and checks the time groaning when he sees how little battery he has left. By the time he recharges he’s going to be dying of boredom.

He takes what time he has left to actually look up the information he was supposed to be looking for. He clicks on the first article and skims over it, jumping to the next just as soon as he has a good grasp of what’s there. What he finds is equal parts promising and worrying. The best of the articles paint Noctis as a loner who doesn’t want anything to do with his classmates and has a disdain for almost everything under the sun. The worrying ones show him volunteering at animal shelters and working a part time job at a sushi restaurant like he isn’t a prince with a throne that should be awaiting him.

His screen suddenly goes dark and he shoves it none to gently back into his pockets with a groan any teenager would be proud of. It’s given him some insight as to what he’s walking into, but at the same time he knows how inaccurate celebrity media can be. In the end all he can do is wait and see for himself and boy does he hate waiting.

Hours pass with him singing various songs to himself, from the time killing classic Ninety Nine Bottles of Elixir, to his personal favorite The Chocobo Song, until his lungs and throat ache too much to continue. He swallows against the rawness of his throat and coughs into his fist. Frost covers his thumb and spreads out over his fingers and the back of his hand and cool relief floods his throat.

“Finally!” He sighs in relief as he clambers to his feet and stretches out the cricks in his back.

His wings burst from his back in a shower of white feathers and chilling frost as magic twines around his body cloaking him from visibility. He flings himself over the edge and glides down to a park his wings dissolving into frost as his feet near the ground. He grunts at the slight impact and materializes into visibility with a puff of quickly fading frost.

He dusts off his clothes subtly checking to make sure he hadn’t been spotted and walks out of the park with a skip in his step glad to be free of his rooftop prison. He makes his way down the street only stopping for long enough to charm the nearest atm into coughing up a couple thousand crowns. He goes on his way keeping an eye out for a viable location from which he can plan out his next move. 

He finds it in a quiet dim little hole in the wall that in all honesty should have felt the wrath of a health inspector years ago. He eats a questionable burger and greasy onion rings alongside a chocolate shake that tastes like pure sin with gusto as he hacks his way into a new life. He forges all the necessary documents, finds himself an apartment near Noctis’ school, hacks into that school to register as a student and put himself in all of Noctis’ classes.

Once the difficult tasks are managed he finally goes online shopping for normal human blending in things like food, school supplies, furniture, video games, a television, and a wardrobe that has more than one outfit in it.

Once he’s finally got everything ready he puts down his third shake, wipes off his mouth, drops a small fortune in crowns to pay for his meal, and reenters the world digitally born anew and ready to live. He walks to the mall and people watches for hours walking from store to store, occasionally buying something, and picking up little things like slang and behaviors to add to his new identity. In the course of a couple hours he settles into his new persona, normal high school student Prompto Argentum.

It’s mostly just himself, but with a touch of modern day teen thrown in.

With everything settled he calls a cab to take him home. He grabs the keys from the landlord and celebrates moving into his new apartment by crashing on the couch.

He awakes twelve hours later to what might just be the worlds cutest alarm a chocobo chicks kweh and dresses himself in the school uniform he picked up at the mall. He looks in the mirror wondering if straightening out everything would make him look good or weird when the alarm goes off again. He runs out the door forgetting that hunger is a thing and makes it to the school just in time to get his schedule.

He walks to his first class feeling like a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse, like he could explode across the halls at any second. He can’t help it, Noctis is there, soon he’ll be in the same room as Noctis! He has to concentrate to keep his feet on the ground. He can barely breathe by the time he pulls open the classroom door.

He freezes almost instantly at the feeling of Noctis’ eyes on him. His face turns from pink to red in the space between heartbeats and this is it this is where he dies in high school staring like a creep at the only person his arrow ever worked for.

The teacher waves him in the door, her overly perky voice piercing through the haps in his head. “Well don’t just stand there come in and tell us something about yourself.”

He thankfully manages to keep enough of his brain working to blurt out, ”Hi I’m Prompto Argentum and I haven’t been to public school before.” Instead of something more incriminating like I’m a messenger here because I royally fucked up or Noctis I love you.

“Hello Prompto.” The entire class says together in a tone that could best be described as zombie lite.

The teacher grins like it’s the most precious thing she’s ever heard in her life and gestures to an empty seat, the only empty seat in the room, the seat right beside Noctis.

“You can go sit beside Noctis.” She says like that’s a completely reasonable thing to ask someone.

His heart makes a valiant attempt to escape his body. As he slowly walks to the seat beside Noctis the eyes of the entire class focus on him. Most are just looking at him for the novelty of having a new person, but a few are actively glaring like it’s his fault that he has to sit next to Noctis.

He cautiously slides into his newly assigned seat and looks over at Noctis without trying to look like he’s looking at Noctis. Noctis isn't even doing anything he's just sitting there writing on his worksheet just like every other student in the room and yet tearing his eyes away from him hurts. Looking at him hurts, everything to do with Noctis fills his body with a longing so strong it aches. His entire left side tingles just because it's the side facing Noctis. His stomach feels like it’s full of butterflies kitted for war with little flame throwers and machine guns attached to their wings.

He’s got it bad. It’s even worse than he feared.

He spends his whole day trying and failing to build up the nerve to speak struck dumb whenever Noctis turns his entrancing blue eyes toward him. He gets lost so many times in just how amazing Noctis is that the end of the day sneaks up on him. It feels like no time at all has passed since he's stumbled into the classroom, his entire sense of time lost to the way Noctis hair glints in the light from the window and how handsome his profile is. Before he knows it he's watching Noctis back moving further away as the young prince makes his way toward the pick up zone where he'll loose his chance for the day.

Prompto swallows down the butterflies trying to claw up his throat, his fingers tightening around the strap of his backpack. _If I don’t do it now I’ll never do it._ It's probably not true but it's exactly the motivation he needs to get himself together. He takes a deep breath and shakes himself off in the hopes that his nerves will shake right out of him too. Then with his heart pounding away in his throat he runs right up to Noctis and pats him on his shoulder, his whole hand tingling from the too brief contact. Talking before Noctis can look at him with those eyes and steal away his voice before he even gets a chance to speak. “Hey there Prince Noctis.”

Noctis turns to face him his hand rubbing at the bottom of his mouth eyes dark as they seem to pierce right through him. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

Prompto’s stomach does a swooping thing that has very little to do with Noctis’ close proximity or just how weak in the knees the sound of his voice made him, and more to do with the sudden surge of panic at being recognized. Did he actually see him on the rooftop or does he remember him from that horrible day they both probably want to forget? He rubs the back of his head as a desperate list of excuses and lies scroll down through his mind like a teleprompter on fast forward.

“I don’t think so?” It comes out a squeaky question and somehow out of his ass he pulls a viable continuation. “We might have passed each other on the street before, but I don’t think we’ve ever properly met before today.”

“Maybe.” Noctis says with just enough skepticism in his tone to make Prompto break out in a nervous sweat.

He laughs nervously his stomach doing flips inside his abdominal cavity as he tries desperately to think of something anything to say.

Noctis’ phone dings and it takes effort for Prompto not to sigh in relief as Noctis lifts it to check his new message. “Looks like my ride’s here.

He throws his arm over Prompto’s shoulder and leads them both toward the parking lot set aside for picking students up after school. “Why don’t you hang out with me today?”

Prompto’s mind implodes all of his brains having evacuated his head to take up residence purring in his shoulder soaking up the warmth of Noctis’ touch. He flushes none of his blood reaching his brain blocked off by the slight pressure of Noctis’ arm. It might as well be a leash for how effortlessly it leads him away from his initial plans to introduce himself and ditch into a real hang out.

It doesn’t take long for Noctis to lead him over to a black car that just screams nondescript government vehicle. The two men standing beside it don’t quite give off that same air, but the beginnings of it hang around them like a thick cloud of noxious smoke. One is swarthy and built like he was born with a six pack. The other is tall and thin with an aristocratic face.

He stands on his toes trying to get a better look at them over the crowd of starstuck teens hanging around Noctis shooting murderous looks at the blonde being led around by him. “Who are they?”

Noctis groans his cheeks going pink with embarrassment as he looks down at the ground seeming to debate with himself for a second before answering. “Those are my retainers, the big guy with the mullet is Gladio and the one drinking that awful canned coffee is Ignis.”

“Are they always like that?” Prompto asks his fingers itching for his gun as he watches Gladio lean toward Ignis both of them surrounded in a haze he recognizes well from his job, the both of them lovelorn and pining.

“Like what, conspicuously inconspicuous?” Noctis asks like he doesn’t see it and it takes Prompto a good few seconds to realize that for all that Noctis seems to have some sense of supernatural sight, this is something he can only see because he was specifically created to look for it.

Prompto falls back on Noctis’ words snapping his fingers. “Let me guess bodyguards?”

Noctis shrugs in a way that seems more like a desperate ploy to seem casual than sincere casualness. “You could call them that, though Ignis is more like a personal assistant than anything. I’m not sure why Gladio is here though, usually around now he’s in training.”

Prompto nods, his attention tugged back and forth between the sheer joy of having Noctis beside him and the dangling carrot on a stick of a potential couple standing right in front of him. He can already tell that all they need is a push in the right direction, just a little one; he wouldn’t even need to hit them both. It’s almost physically painful to be in the same area with them without his trusty gun in his hands and given that he’s just inserted himself into Noctis’ life he’s going to be seeing a lot more of these two.

Unfortunately being in mortal form has its disadvantages chief among them being that he’s no longer invisible and no one in their right mind is going to let some crazy kid come up and shoot them. There’s also the fact that even if he somehow manages to shoot someone there’s still a big chance he’ll be seen shooting someone and while he’s been inside a prison before, love can bloom in the strangest of places after all, he has no desire to be incarcerated in one.

He can’t even contact his siblings to pass the job off to one of them for fear of showing off his magic, magic that no mortal unconnected to the Crystal or royal family should have, magic that if he wasn’t careful could call to Noctis’ heart encouraging whatever feelings he has toward him to grow into love. Considering that the only reason he’s here right now is to destroy his own feelings for Noctis the last thing he needs is a Noctis who loves him back.

Noctis bumps into Prompto’s shoulder dragging him from his thoughts back into the real world. “You shouldn’t be afraid of them. They’re not going to hurt you.”

Prompto looks over at the two bodyguards blanching at the intensity in Ignis’ stare. “You say that dude, but the guy in the glasses looks like he’s trying to figure out the best way to make me disappear.”

Noctis rolls his eyes. “Ignis isn’t plotting to kill you or kidnap you. He’s just watching you because you’re hanging around near me and he’s trying to decide if you’re a bad influence or not.”

“And if he does decide that I’m a bad influence?” Prompto asks wincing at the thought of what someone like Ignis could do to him and get away with.

Noctis pats him on the shoulder. “Then it was nice knowing you while it lasted.”


End file.
